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Grumpy SEO Guy
Bad Answers to A Popular Question - (SEO Is Not About Your Website) - Episode 143
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This is grumpy SEO guy. Episode 143. SEO has very little to do with your website. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies and and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because a lot of people are asking this question on different SEO forums and the answers they're getting are not good. So in this episode, I'm going to tell you what the question is, I'm going to tell you what the answers are, I'm going to tell you why those answers are not good, and then I'm going to tell you what better answers would be. Okay, but before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. But first, let's do this. You can email me at hello@grumpy SEO guy.com if you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy seoguy if you'd like to ask questions to me or other listeners of the show, you can do so@Reddit.com r grumpseoguy and if you have a complicated question and would like to set up a zoom advisory call, you can email me and we can get that planned. Okay, here we go. So here's the question that people ask. Hey, guys, I made a website. What changes should I make to my website to have better SEO? Okay, the problem with that question is it presumes that there is something you can do to your own website to boost your SEO. And that's somewhat true, but not in the way most People think. So we're going to talk about this in a little bit. First, I want to talk about the answers that people usually give. So they usually say, well, I looked at your website and your website design is not good. You need to fix your website design. No, that's not a good answer. And the reason that's not a good answer is because website design is not a ranking factor, or they will say you need better content. No, that's not a good answer. And the reason that's not a good answer is because quality of content is not a ranking factor, or they will say you need more content. I looked at your site and you do not have enough content. No, that's not a good answer. And the reason that's not a good answer is because the amount of content on your site is not a ranking factor. Or they will say your website is too slow, you need to make it faster. No, that's not a good answer. And the reason that's not a good answer is because in many cases, site loading speed is not a ranking factor. So these are the answers that people usually get. Let me tell you why I think people usually get these. The first reason is because this is just normal SEO advice and everybody thinks it's correct, and so they just tell everybody, but that doesn't mean it's actually correct. Okay? And the second reason is because I think if you remember when you were in school and your teacher would hand out assignments, and when they would give you an assignment, they would give you guidelines to follow. And if you followed the guidelines, you would receive an A, right? If you followed the guidelines, you'd get an A. Now, that works in school because everybody can get an A. But search engine optimization doesn't work that way because not everybody can be on the first page of the results. So people seem to think that if you follow some guideline, you will rank higher. But there is no guideline, okay? Not for SEO. So now we need to talk a little bit about what actually makes you rank. So with the exception of local SEO, which I am not describing here, okay, I am not talking about local SEO. I'm talking about regular SEO. There are four things that you need to rank, okay? So let's talk about them. The four things you need to rank. 1. Avoid penalties. A penalty is when you do something you're not supposed to do and the search engines push you out of the results. You can lose a lot of rank. We have another episode that talks about penalties. So I'm not really going to talk about it right now. But just understand you want to not have a penalty. Okay? Number two, you need content, but it's not about how good or how helpful the content is. You simply need content on your site. The content has to be relevant to the keywords that you want to rank for. Okay? So number three is relevancy. Relevancy means what is your website about? What is the topic of your website? Okay, that's what relevancy means. What is the topic of your website? Okay, now there's two ways to get relevancy. One is with content, which we just talked about, and the other is a little bit more difficult, and I'm not gonna talk about that right now. Just understand if you write content about your topic, you have relevancy. Okay? That's all you have to know. That's all you have to know. And number four, you need authority. Authority is a measure of trustworthiness or power. Authority is a measure of trustworthiness of your website, and it kind of tells the search engines why you should rank and where you should rank. Okay? So authority comes from backlinks. A backlink is a link from a website to a different website. Okay? So if you have a link on your own website to a different page on your website, that's not a backlink. A backlink is from a different website to your website. Okay? So backlinks offer authority. Now, this can be a pretty hard topic to understand. It can actually get complicated. So I'm going to make it very easy Right now, most websites on the Internet have authority. Most backlinks will provide some authority. So if a website links to you, you are receiving some authority from that. That's how you get authority. That's the only way to get authority. You cannot create your own authority. So of these four things, the first three are relatively easy. Okay? Getting authority is much more difficult. Getting authority is also the biggest ranking factor. So you need the first three things in order to rank. But. But after you have those, you need as much authority as possible. An easier way to think about SEO is to think about it not as following requirements, but doing better than your competition. So it's not about doing anything in a certain way. It's about doing SEO better than your competition. Okay? And getting more authority than your competition is the way to do better than your competition. So let me give you an example. Actually, before we do an example, I want to go back to those first four replies that people give to that question, okay? And the reason those are not the right answer. So none of those will increase authority. There's nothing you can do to your website to build authority. And if you have a new website and you're not ranking, the reason you're not ranking is probably because you do not have enough authority compared to your competitors, okay? Compared to your competitors. So it's not about doing something a certain way. It's about doing it better than your competition. The way to do it better than your competition is to get as much authority as possible. You do not need a specific amount of authority to rank. You just need more than the competitors, okay? There's not like a certain level, and once you hit that, you rank. You just need more than your competitors. So let me give you an example right now, okay? If I make a website and you make a website, okay? And both websites are on the same topic, and we both have good content. Doesn't matter if it's good or not, but we both have content that's relevant for our keywords, okay? And I have more authority than you. Which of our websites is going to rank higher? Mine is because I have more authority than you. Okay? Does that make sense? And if you have more authority than me, you will outrank me. Okay? We both have relevancy. We both have websites that are good. If you have more authority than me, you will outrank me. If I have more authority than you, I will outrank you. So, hey, guys, I have a website. What changes should I make to rank higher or to increase my SEO? You should get authority by building backlinks. That's how you should do it. So let me. Now people are gonna say that I'm about to contradict myself. That's fine. Think that if you want, but technically it's not. It's not correct. But let me. Let me give you another example I think will maybe help you understand this. There are some on page things that matter, right? And on page is like stuff you can do to your own website, right? There are some on page things that matter, but only if you have authority. If you don't have authority, the search engines are not paying attention to your website. And it doesn't matter how good anything is because you don't have enough authority. The search engines aren't even focusing on you. So if you're not ranking and you want to rank, you need authority. Regardless of if you have problems on your website or not, you need authority. Okay? Once you start getting authority, then those other things start to matter a little bit more. Okay? So for example, here's an example. Title tags. Okay, let's talk about titles. Your title tags can help you because they can create relevancy. Right? Your title tags should have your company name or maybe your web, your site name or whatever. And also the keywords in a way that is logical. Don't just put your keywords in there if it doesn't make sense. Okay, but it should make sense. Have you ever noticed that most of the websites on the first page have very similar titles? Have you ever noticed that? That's because those are good, relevant titles. Okay, I'm not saying copy them. I'm just saying they're probably like helpful title tags. So anyways, look, once you have authority, some of the other stuff starts to matter a little bit more, but it still really doesn't matter. Okay? Like, a badly designed website with unhelpful content with lots of authority will outrank a nicely designed website with terrific content and less authority. Okay? And there's reasons for this, but we're not gonna talk about them now because that's more complicated. Let's not even worry about that for right now. So the way to do better than your competition is by getting more authority than your competition. And all of the things that people like to talk about all the time do matter a little bit, but they don't matter when you do not have authority. Okay? They don't matter if you don't have authority. So how do I improve my SEO? You build backlinks and get authority. I hope this makes sense. Let me know what questions you have about any of these topics. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or. Or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders, because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder. And it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast, because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com Grumpy SEO Guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.